His 101 - Chapters 1-7

Front 1

Forerunners of humans after genetically splitting from the chimpanzees.

Back 1

Hominins

Front 2

Australopiths

Back 2

Prehuman species that existed before those classed under the genus Homo.

Front 3

Bipedalism

Back 3

The first human characteristic of hominins, specifically, the ability to walk for short periods or distances on their hind legs, although knuckle-walking and tree climbing continued to be practiced.

Front 4

Oldowan

Back 4

The earliest stone-carving technique, which consisted of splitting a stone into two, thereby producing sharp edges on both fragments. See also Acheulian and Levallois.

Front 5

Paleolithic

Back 5

Old Stone Age, 2.5 million–11,500 years ago.

Front 6

Acheulian

Back 6

A technique which consisted of flaking a hard piece of rock (preferably flint, chert, or obsidian) on both sides into a triangle-shaped hand axe, with cutting edges, a hand-held side, and a point.

Front 7

Levallois

Back 7

A stone technique where stone workers first shaped a hard rock into a cylinder or cone.

Front 8

Aboriginals

Back 8

The original settlers of Australia, who arrived some 60,000 years before European settlers at the end of the eighteenth century CE.

Front 9

Dreamtime

Back 9

In the Australian Dreamtime, the shaman constructs an imaginary reality of the tribe's origins and roots, going back to the imaginary time when the world was created and the creator devised all customs, rituals, and myths.

Front 10

Agrarian-urban society

Back 10

A type of society characterized by intensive agriculture and people living in cities, towns, and villages.

Front 11

Agrarian society

Back 11

At a minimum, people engaged in farming cereal grains on rain-fed or irrigated fields and breeding sheep and cattle.

Front 12

Neolithic Age

Back 12

Period from ca. 9600 to 4500 BCE when stone tools were adapted to the requirements of agriculture, through the making of sickles and spades.

Front 13

Assembly

Back 13

Gathering of either all inhabitants or the most influential persons in a town; later, in cities, assemblies and kings made communal decisions on important fiscal or juridical matters.

Front 14

Sharecroppers

Back 14

Farmers who received seed, animals, and tools from landowners in exchange for up to two-thirds of their harvest.

Front 15

Nomads

Back 15

People whose livelihood was based on the herding of animals, such as sheep, goats, cattle, horses, and camels; moving with their animals from pasture to pasture according to the seasons, they lived in tent camps.

Front 16

City, city-state

Back 16

A place of more than 5,000 inhabitants with nonfarming inhabitants (craftspeople, merchants, administrators), markets, and a city leader capable of compelling obedience to his decisions by force.

Front 17

Empire

Back 17

Large multiethnic, multilinguistic, multireligious state consisting of a conquering kingdom and several defeated kingdoms.

Front 18

Palace-state

Back 18

A city or fortified palace with surrounding villages.

Front 19

Bronze Age collapse

Back 19

Around 1200 BCE, resulting from the collapse of the Hittite Empire and the weakening of the Egyptian New Kingdom; chariot warfare had become unsustainable in these early kingdoms.

Front 20

Iron Age

Back 20

Around 1500–1200 BCE, smiths were able to produce sufficiently high temperatures to smelter iron bloom, a mixture of iron and a variety of impurities.

Front 21

Republicanism

Back 21

A system of government in which, in the place of kings, the people are sovereign, electing representatives to executive and legislative offices.

Front 22

Democracy

Back 22

A system of government in which most or all of the people elect representatives and in some cases decide on important issues themselves.

Front 23

Topography

Back 23

The physical features—mountains, rivers, deserts, swamps, etc.—of a region.

Front 24

Cesspits

Back 24

Deep holes or trenches used to deposit human waste and refuse; in the case of Harappa, they were flushed with water into city sewers and drains ultimately leading to the adjacent river.

Front 25

Phallic stones/phallic

Back 25

Of or referring to the male sex organ; Indian religions use a host of phallic images, or lingams, in shrines, rituals, and festivals to symbolize the male, or active, forces of both natural and supernatural creation.

Front 26

Caste

Back 26

A system in which people's places in society—how they live, the work they do, and who they marry—are determined by heredity.

Front 27

Millet

Back 27

A species of grass cultivated for its edible white seeds and as hay for animal feed.

Front 28

Social stratification

Back 28

Groups or classes within a society arranged in a hierarchy, for example, peasants, merchants, officials, ministers, rulers.

Front 29

Client states

Back 29

States that are dependent on or partially controlled by more powerful ones.

Front 30

Feudalism

Back 30

A system of decentralized government in which rule is held by landowners who owe obligations of loyalty and military service to their superiors and protection to those under them (we will see systems like this in Europe and Japan as well).

Front 31

Hegemony

Back 31

A system of state relations in which less powerful states directly or implicitly agree to defer to the lead of the most powerful state, which is, thus, the hegemon.

Front 32

Cordilleras

Back 32

A continuous spine of mountain ranges near or along the entire western coast of the Americas.

Front 33

El Niño

Back 33

A periodic reversal of the normal flow of currents in the Pacific, greatly altering weather patterns.

Front 34

Taxa

Back 34

The classification of organisms into systems of relationship based on genetic and morphological similarities.

Front 35

Midden

Back 35

A refuse pile; archaeologists treasure such piles because a great deal can be learned about the material culture of a society by what the people threw out over long periods of time.

Front 36

Chiefdom

Back 36

An agricultural village or town of up to 1,000 inhabitants, in which people know each other, requiring a person of authority (an elder or the head of a large family) to keep order as a respected chief.

Front 37

Kingdom

Back 37

A city-state or territorial state in which a ruler, claiming a divine mandate and supported by a military force, keeps order and provides for the defense against outside attacks.

Front 38

Sahel

Back 38

An area of steppe or semidesert bordering the Sahara.

Front 39

Animism

Back 39

Perception of reality based on the concept of a life force pervading humans, other animals, and, by extension, plants and inanimate objects.

Front 40

Witchcraft

Back 40

An animistic belief in which an evil person (male or female) can harm an innocent victim at a distance and cause the victim to become possessed, with attendant illnesses.

Front 41

Polytheism

Back 41

Personification of the forces of nature and performance of rituals and sacrifices to assure the benevolence of the gods and goddesses.

Front 42

Glyphic script

Back 42

The Maya developed a script of some 800 images. Some are pictograms standing for words, others are syllables to be combined with other syllables to form words.

Front 43

Geoglyphs

Back 43

Long geometric lines and figures as well as outlines of animals formed in the desert by picking up darker stones and exposing the lighter sand underneath.

Front 44

Cataphracts

Back 44

Heavily armed and protected cavalry soldiers.

Front 45

Hoplites

Back 45

Greek foot soldiers fighting in closed ranks, called "phalanxes".

Front 46

Oracles

Back 46

Makers of predictions of the future to petitioners visiting temples situated on the no-man's-land between city-states.

Front 47

Hellenistic

Back 47

Period of Greek history from 323 BCE to 31 BCE.

Front 48

Republic

Back 48

State without a royal dynasty and with an elected executive.

Front 49

Legionaries

Back 49

Roman foot soldiers fighting in closed ranks.

Front 50

Latifundia

Back 50

Large, ruling class?owned estates with tenant farmers or slaves.

Front 51

Transcendence

Back 51

A state of being or existence above and beyond the limits of material experience.

Front 52

Synagogues

Back 52

Jewish meeting places for prayer and legal consultation.